Direct Link Tracking - How to test Direct Link Tracking

Like AffiliateWP, the Direct Link Tracking add-on tracks an affiliate by creating a visit. A visit is created when a visitor clicks a link on the affiliate's website and arrives on the target site. The target site is where both AffiliateWP and Direct Link Tracking is installed and activated.

Once a visit is stored, and for the correct affiliate, testing is essentially complete. AffiliateWP itself will go on to generate a referral when a purchase or conversion is made.

All you need to do to test is make sure the visit is correctly created by Direct Link Tracking. Follow these steps:

Make sure AffiliateWP and the Direct Link Tracking add-on is installed and activated.

From another site, (or local testing site) create a page and add a link to the target site where AffiliateWP and Direct Link Tracking is installed. Note down the URL of the page you have added that contains the link, this will be used in step 4 below.

On the target site, enable Allow Direct Link Tracking from Affiliates → Settings → Direct Link Tracking, or enable it on a per-affiliate basis from the affiliate's edit screen.

On the target site, add a direct link domain for an affiliate. This will be the URL of the page where you added the link in step 2 above. You can add a direct link as either the site administrator, or as an affiliate.

Click the link you added to the page in step 2. You should arrive on the target site and a visit will be created on the Affiliates → Visits page. If you're familiar with how to view cookies in your browser, you can simply check to see if AffiliateWP's default cookies were created. These are affwp_ref and affwp_ref_visit_id. The affwp_ref cookie should hold the correct affiliate ID that had the direct link domain assigned to them.

That's it! If you didn't see a visit created in step 6, see the troubleshooting article.